Monday, April 03, 2017

Pakistan's last Jew marks Passover victory

The
approaching festival of Passover celebrates the liberation of the
Jewish people from bondage. But the festival will have special
significance this year for one man in particular. Fischel Benkhald has won his fight to get his religious status changed from 'Muslim' to 'Jew' on his identity card. Lyn Julius explains the backstory in the Huffington Post:

Fischel (pictured)
— his chosen Yiddish name — was born Faisal Benkhald in the Pakistani
city of Karachi to a Jewish mother and Muslim father. The fourth of
five children, he recited blessings over Shabbat candles, helped his
mother bake challah bread every Friday and watched her prepare
kosher dishes. Unlike his siblings, Benkhald felt a strong pull to his
Jewish ancestry.

Raised by his strictly Muslim uncle after the death of his parents,
Benkhald, 29, began campaigning to to change his religious status on his
identity card - an official requirement - from Muslim to Jew in
2014.

His
application to the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA)
was denied in November 2015. Fishel’s case was aired in the Jewish press and a House of Lords inquiry by the All Parliamentary Party Group for International Religious Freedom heard a submission by my organisation, Harif, into
the plight of Pakistan’s Jews. At its peak, the community numbered up
to 3,000 Jews, but almost all have fled to Israel, Britain or Canada.
There is still a Christian community, but it has suffered violence and
persecution. On the flimsiest of pretexts, Christians can fall foul
of Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws, leading to their arrest,
imprisonment and even the death penalty. The country’s constitution is
based on Islam.

This
week, after three years of struggle, Fischel Benkhald won his right to
register officially as a Jew. Wilson Chowdhry, chairman of the British
Pakistani Christian Association, hailed Fischel’s success as a
victory: ‘The obtaining of NADRA registration for Fischel as a Jew is
groundbreaking. As a very ordinary man he has managed to remove an
age-old discrimination.’

Fischel
had asked Chowdhry to take on his case with the Pakistani government.
‘Our initial inquiry led to very little progress: they simply chose not
to respond,’ says Chowdhry.

But
the First Minister at the Pakistan High Commission in the UK began to
make overtures to Chowdhry’s group with a view to improving the
situation for minorities in Pakistan.

Chowdhry told him about Fischel’s case. The minister was very moved.

Islam
allows non-Muslims to convert to Islam. It does not allow apostasy - a
Muslim to convert to other religions. Chowdhry explains: ‘Although
there is no apostasy law, cultural intolerance of converts means for
those who choose to quit Islam, life will be full of danger.’

A previous test case involving a Christian MP
representing minorities in Pakistan and harassed by political
opponents, who claimed he was an apostate from Islam, failed to change
the identity registration process.

In the UK Chowdhry’s group had been called to help give evidence that no Sikh, required to carry a holy knife or Kirpaan, had ever used the weapon inappropriately.

It
was imperative to prove that Fischel had not converted to Judaism from
Islam. According to Jewish law, he is considered a Jew by birth, since
the religion is passed through the maternal line.

Chowdhry
is confident that Fischel’s case ‘ would convince other Jews to come
out of hiding and begin to unite behind a project to build a new
synagogue.’ The 2011 census had 900 Pakistanis registered as Jews.

However, that figure would seem wildly optimistic in view of the fact that the community ceased to exist in the 1970s and the last synagogue in Karachi was razed to the ground.

Already
Fischel is planning to challenge the government to name the Karachi
cemetery, the last remaining Jewish graveyard in Pakistan, as a heritage
site. The British Pakistani Christian Association has offered to help
him and is also willing to act as a conduit for donations. ‘A Jewish
Heritage site in Pakistan would be a great legacy and would remind
Pakistan of their once more tolerant society,’ says Wilson Chowdhry.

Fischel is yet to receive his identity card, but his message for Passover is clear.

“It feels like shackles have been removed from me and I feel a great sense of liberty now.”

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Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)